THE SLEEPING FATHER
Bernard Schwartz has lost his wife, his career, and finally, thanks to the accidental combination of two classes of antidepressants, his consciousness. He emerges from a coma to find his son Chris, the perpetual smart-ass, and his daughter Cathy, a Jewish teen turned self-martyred Catholic, stumbling headlong toward trauma-induced maturity. The Sleeping Father is about the loss of innocence, the disorienting innocence of second childhood, the biochemical mechanics of sanity and love, the nature of language and meaning, and the spirituality of selfhood. But most of all it is about the Schwartzes, a typical American family making their way the best way they know how in a small town called Bellwether,
Bernard Schwartz has lost his wife, his career, and finally, thanks to the accidental combination of two classes of antidepressants, his consciousness. He emerges from a coma to find his son Chris, the perpetual smart-ass, and his daughter Cathy, a Jewish teen turned self-martyred Catholic, stumbling headlong toward trauma-induced maturity. The Sleeping Father is about the loss of innocence, the disorienting innocence of second childhood, the biochemical mechanics of sanity and love, the nature of language and meaning, and the spirituality of selfhood. But most of all it is about the Schwartzes, a typical American family making their way the best way they know how in a small town called Bellwether, Connecticut.
- Catapult
- Paperback
- September 2003
- 9781932360004
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About Matthew Sharpe
Matthew Sharpe was born in New York City during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A graduate of Oberlin College and Columbia University, he is the author of Nothing Is Terrible and Stories from the Tube. He has taught at Columbia University, Bard College, and New College of Florida, and is the writer in residence at Bronx Academy of Letters, a new writing-themed public high school. His stories and articles have appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope, BOMB, American Letters & Commentary, Southwest Review, and Teachers & Writers magazine.